anyway.

My brother came up with the best attachment for the pirate mech you gave me—a parrot for one spotting die.

(we've been digging through our old legos.)

yrs—
—Ben

Wohoa! Yes, finally! I've played a fair bunch of games this summer and have already talked with people in the right places to hold Mechaton games at a few Cons here in Sweden. Will the final rules contain anything new not discussed here before or just refinments? I've played with the rules you whipped up for me some time ago, only thing I added was a small change to initiative to beef it up.

But even though I've gotten people to play with no one of them has started to build their own so I've had to build quite a lot of them to support a 5 person game without having to force any one to pick only what no one else took. I'll update my bricklink gallery someday with the coolest ones. If you got any pictures taken from Gencon it would be nice to see them, I need inspiration for new Mechs.

Nice to see that text files will be free. But I'd like the book of course.

Yes! There is an awesome new rule. It'll be in the book and here it is now.

Okay, so in the rules as they exist right now, if you're shooting me and I'm not in cover, you damage me on a damage die roll of 5 or 6, right? And if I'm in cover, you damage me on a damage die roll of 6.

The new rule is, if I'm in cover, you damage my cover on a damage die roll of 5.

If my cover is a wall, 1 damage = you break off 2 bricks. Single bricks are not cover.

If my cover is another mech, 1 damage = 1 damage!

Oh crap thats awesome.

Ben, my brother did that too when we played! Parrots are awesome spotters.

Hey Vincent, what happens when you have a two-player game and we both have the number at the beginning of the game? I remembered what you did when we played at JiffyCon, and we both rolled a dice and the winner got to pick whether he lost an attachment or I did. But I didn't see anything about that in the rules. Or am I dumb?

Uh oh, another thing left out of the book. Thanks for spotting and reminding, Nathan.

Hey Aaron, if you post those campaign rule ideas, link to 'em here, okay?

But what about if you're using cover that isn't made of easily detachable bricks, huh? What then? 'Cuz when my cousin and I went a few rounds last month, we used those big grey mountain bricks as cover pieces.

Then too bad for you!

The answer's obvious: you can't shoot down a mountain!

Also, Lego pieces that big should be pointed at and mocked. Take them out of your big box of Lego, put them in the middle of a table, point at them, and say, "You are a stupid brick. You should have been made of many, smaller bricks, but Lego got cheap and reduced your creative potential."

Then you put it back in your box or use it for whatever it's useful for.

NinJ - I used to think that about the BURPs (Big Ugly Rock Pieces) too, but then I decided that they allow stuff like this:

some of my mountain pics
mountain-that-puts-mine-to-shame pic

... and it's all good.

James

Nor would this be possible without BURPs. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures online which show how the structure holding up the cliff was constructed using various large pieces (mostly from the Belville line) to build a sturdy frame. If this had been built entirely out of bricks, it would weigh a lot more, have taken much longer to build, and would be much more fragile (and I might not have had the parts).

And then there's always the question of just what is an unacceptable combination of pieces. A 1x2 brick could be made from as many as 6 pieces, but would be much less sturdy.

It's also worth noting that many LEGO sets hide a treasure chest inside the BURP. if the BURP was exactly replaced by bricks, the chest wouldn't fit, so the set would have to be larger to have room for the chest.

Frank

True to form, you're taking those crap, specialized pieces and making them work for you. It's part of the Lego experience, I think.

I don't use bricks for walls either since I've been using various peoples excellent warhammer terrain tables, but it's a good rule anyway. Stops people from firing right through those clusterfucks that tend to happen near chokepoints and stations. But if I find my technic pieces I'll build me some walls and large bunkers and stuff.

Oh, and I've updated my Brickshelf gallery. Just search for uriel_johan or mechaton.

*warning: ego stroking fanboy raving*

Vincent,
Mechaton rocks! I stumbled on it over a year ago which caused me to drag out a long neglected lego collection and start making little robots as my wife looked on with a raised eyebrow. Thank you! I've played around with the rules on http://lumpley.com/games/mecha.html and even tried some of my own rule mods although none worked out very well. I've also been lurking around here trying to keep up on the rule evolution and was really excited to see that you are going to sell a "complete as of today" rulebook and make downloads available. So anyway... (without sounding too annoying) when do you think you'll have a rulebook available on IPR or PDF's available here?

Uriel,
Great mechs! I've had pics of mine on brickshelf for a while now. Search for Darksyntax or MechaTon.

Hey, nice mecha!

I stumbled on this one and HAD to share.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1994245

Linked.

That's cool!

I got a bunch of work done on the rulebook, by the way. Another good weekend and It'll be in print.

Yay, good to hear.  (I missed the comment first time around, but google gave me the update.)

Darksyntax: Thanks for the compliment! I found your gallery ages ago and have looked on them often to find inspiration for my own building.

Are you still going to put up the text files for free?

Email me, I'll send you the link.